man if you dared put a girl of Elnora's make
through what she suffered yesterday, and will suffer again to-day,
and let her know you did it on purpose. I admire your nerve. But I've
watched this since Elnora was born, and I got enough. Things have come
to a pass where they go better for her, or I interfere."

"As if you'd ever done anything but interfere all her life! Think I
haven't watched you? Think I, with my heart raw in my breast, and too
numb to resent it openly, haven't seen you and Mag Sinton trying to turn
Elnora against me day after day? When did you ever tell her what her
father meant to me? When did you ever try to make her see the wreck of
my life, and what I've suffered? No indeed! Always it's been poor little
abused Elnora, and cakes, kissing, extra clothes, and encouraging her
to run to you with a pitiful mouth every time I tried to make a woman of
her."

"Kate Comstock, that's unjust," cried Sinton. "Only last night I tried
to show her the picture I saw the day she was born. I begged her to come
to you and tell you pleasant what she needed, and ask you for what I
happen to know you can well afford to give her."

"I can't!" cried Mrs. Comstock. "You know I can't!"

"Then get so you can!" said Wesley Sinton. "Any day you say the word you
can sell six thousand worth of rare timber off this place easy. I'll
see to clearing and working the fields cheap as dirt, for Elnora's
sake. I'll buy you more cattle to fatten. All you've got to do is sign
a lease, to pull thousands from the ground in oil, as the rest of us are
doing all around you!"

"Cut down Robert's trees!" shrieked Mrs. Comstock. "Tear up his land!
Cover everything with horrid, greasy oil! I'll die first."

"You mean you'll let Elnora go like a beggar, and hurt and mortify her
past bearing. I've got to the place where I tell you plain what I am
going to do. Maggie and I went to town last night, and we bought what
things Elnora needs most urgent to make her look a little like the rest
of the high school girls. Now here it is in plain English. You can help
get these things ready, and let us give them to her as we want----"

"She won't touch them!" cried Mrs. Comstock.

"Then you can pay us, and she can take them as her right----"

"I won't!"

"Then I will tell Elnora just what you are worth, what you can afford,
and how much of this she owns. I'll loan her the money to buy books and
decent clothes, and when she is of age she can sell her s